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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

20 July - Blogs I'm Following II

Researchers from Texas A&M University have returned from a trip to examine the scope and size of this year's "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico and have measured it currently to be about 3,300 square miles,...

Britons love to lecture the world about integrity and the rule of law, but the News of the World phone hacking scandal has laid bare a web of collusion between money, power, media and the police. Far from...

When former astronaut Story Musgrave addresses an expected huge throng of UFO believers in California next week, he'll delight the crowd when he tells them he believes we're not alone in the universe. But...

At first glance, that may sound like a crazy question. The two giants of the global economy appear to be heading in opposite directions. China is the world's up-and-coming superpower, propelled forward by ...

PC World and many others bring us some great news about the future methods of transportation. Cars have become obsolete and they consume too much energy. So the EU has started an official EU project My...

The Fish and Wildlife Service determined Monday that whitebark pine, a tree found atop mountains across the American West, faces an “imminent” risk of extinction because of factors including climate change...

Lamb, beef and cheese generate the most greenhouse gases of 20 popular meat, fish, dairy and vegetable proteins, according to a new study from the Environmental Working Group. The Meat Eater's Guide, relea...

Massive global greenhouse gas pollution is changing the chemistry of the world's oceans so much that scientists now predict it could severely damage shellfish populations and the nations that depend on the...

Suzanne B. McLaren, the collection manager in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's section of mammals, extends the wing of an approximately 3-inch specimen of a Seminole bat, rare in Pennsylvania, whic...

Discovery Channel is set to announce a potentially controversial new series: A docu-soap reality show set in the country’s largest medical marijuana distributorship and starring a pot reform activist. This...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will fly into Berlin today for a summit with Angela Merkel aimed at forging a common stance on the Greek rescue package as the eurozone lurches closer to collapse. Chancel...

Thieves made off with more than $20,000 worth of copper wire from two far southwest suburban businesses sometime between Monday afternoon and early Tuesday. The theft happened sometime between 4:30 p.m. o...

A family friend has been arrested for allegedly molesting a 10-year-old girl while living with the victim's uncle. A family friend, 50-year-old Johnny Connor, is suspected of performing a lewd act that c...

Lee Lewis, the owner of the tricked-out hearse loaded with an arsenal of fake weapons and abandoned in Miami Gardens, was slapped late Monday with an additional felony charge. The count: a rarely used stat...

Riots have broken out in cities in Malawi as opposition groups protest against President Bingu wa Mutharika's government. At least one person has died in the northern city of Mzuzu and protesters are bur...

A Prince William county man openly admits he shot at a neighborhood dog in front of other neighbors. Some of those neighbors say they support the man’s actions. The 59-year-old man says he did it to pro...

The global economic crisis which originated in the sub-prime debacle in the United States, and has been characterised by stagnation or anemic economic growth in Europe and Japan, remains in contrast to the...

Europe is now burning. FIRE is the combination of the initials of the three words - Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. The cradle of the large-scale finance and real estate accident is the United States, ...

Partisan tensions could hardly be worse in the House, but on Friday afternoon Speaker John Boehner walked into Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol suite for a cordial session with his Democratic counter...

Wonder why the Greek 2 Year bond just plunged, sending its yield to a laughable all time high 39.09% (a 312 bps move today alone)? Wonder no more. According to the ECB’s Ewald Novotny the central bank has ...

*Middle-Man and the Debt Ceiling Debacle* [*Don't forget to click to enlarge.*] *by Ken* Well, Tom, that's pretty much where I am on the Events of the Day. Sick to death, tired of it all, and . . . and . ...

Related: America Is A Failed State The erosion of the American republic has been a long historical process that has reached its final stages. The erosion didn't begin with President Barack Obama, or Geo...

Here is an interesting question; "Does the BBC DG have knowledge of and take responsibility for the BBC journalist who has been barred from Parliament? 'Gobby (Paul Lambert) has had his Pass withdrawn, re...

*INTRODUCTION: How to roll back the state using environmental judo* *When New Zealand first announced it had made up the new position of Minister for the Environment, his professor at UC Berkeley told him...

Every child has written their names on the beach at some point. But whereas most people's 'sandwriting' is washed away, one super-rich Arab sheikh has ensured that his doodles will last a little longer. H...

Parts of southern Somalia are suffering from famine, a UN official said Wednesday, and tens of thousands of Somalis have already died in the worst hunger emergency in a generation. The Horn of Africa is s...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged eurozone leaders to take immediate action over the region's debt crisis, warning it could prove "very costly" for the world. Europe's policymakers must pres...

Alarmist editorializing about Iran, its regional influence, and its nuclear energy program has picked up considerably in the past few weeks. In the wake of the latest IAEA report this past Spring which rev...

Stolen from that Well-Armed Lamb! (Do yourself a favor and watch this very short, smart video.)There Are 630 "Private" Contractors, & 170 "Mercenary" Companies At Work In IraqWhen you outsource your military...

For millions of people enduring this week's extreme heat and humidity, it feels like they're living in a pressure cooker. And in a sense, they are. Much of the United States is trapped under a heat "dome" ...

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to approve an ordinance giving animal control officers the right to declare a dog “vicious,” a designation that can potentially lead to the animal being euthani...

"When a country is indebted to the degree that we’re indebted, the country always defaults. We will default because the debt is unsustainable," Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said on the House floor today. "If we d...

Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company's already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track crimina...

Recent protests in Israel highlight the differences between the country's religious and secular Jewish communities. Hundreds of right-wing Jews have taken part in demonstrations outside Israel's Supreme ...

Ontario forest fires may force as many as 7,000 First Nations people from their homes as Canadian Forces hurry to get people out of their remote communities before the flames arrive. "There are worries th...

Hurricane Dora grew stronger offshore on Wednesday as it brought rain to the Mexican coast. The fourth hurricane of the eastern Pacific season was forecast to move parallel to the shoreline for several d...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified another moon around the dwarf planet Pluto. It becomes the fourth object known to be circling the distant world after the long-recognised Charo...

Iran has brought down a U.S. "spy drone" flying near its Fordo nuclear enrichment plant in Qom province, state-run media reported Wednesday. The date of the incident has not been disclosed, and three U.S. ...

Plans to get people to adopt healthier lifestyles will not work unless the government is more prepared to use legislation, peers believe. The House of Lords science and technology committee said ministers...

In the nine years Mark Stroman has been on death row in Texas, he says he has watched 208 people walk past him on the way to be executed. This week it is his turn. But fighting to save his life is the man...

Nearly everything that eurozone leaders have done in response to the euro crisis has been done in the name of preventing contagion. But guess what. It's already here. Because (nearly) everything those lea...

"We are heading towards fiscal union or break-up," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. "Talk is no longer enough as the fire threatens to leap over the firebreak into Spain and Italy. "What the mark...

On Today we had 'Thought for the Day' presented by Abdal Hakim Murad, a Muslim. He's a regular, unsurprisingly. A reader writes; "As usual with nearly all Muslims he slips in a bit of anti Christian rhet...

*Website for this image* On 14 July 2011, Wayne Madsen suggested that the *Christopher Shale "murder" could be linked to that of Dr. David Kelly** *"A well-placed UK source has informed Wayne Madsen Rep...

There hasn't been a poll, at least as far as I know, that asks Americans if they think life imprisonment for banksters who, carried away with greed and avarice, tanked the economy, is too lenient. Nor ha...

Some interesting observations here from a B-BBC reader.... "Anyone hear John Pienaar on the BBC this morning getting over excited and giving us his version of events?Cameron says he had no inappropriate ...

It's summer... so who wants to be inside on the computer when we can be outside enjoying the sun? Or at least enjoying the sun as long as it stays tolerable... so in the mornings and evenings... Anyway, i...

Here's one for you: Report: Obama top recipient of News Corp. donations Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with Presid...

[image: Democratic leaders] President Barack Obama summoned top Democratic lawmakers back on the way to the White House Wednesday to resume negotiations on prevention a potentially crippling government de...

By Duane Craig Perhaps it is time for Asarco to catch a break on the environmental front and its latest action of filing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for lying under oath about le...

Scott Walker and his army of right-wing zombies in the Wisconsin Republican Party were eager to accomplish several things affecting elections before the recall votes expected to end his absolute power in ...

A nurse held on suspicion of murdering patients at a hospital in Stockport has been named as Rebecca Leighton. The 27-year-old was arrested at her home in Heaviley, Stockport, at 6am. Crime scene investi...

[image: A KWS ranger stands guard next to the ivory pile that was set ablaze at the Tsavo West National Park on 20 July 2011. Amos Rono / kws.org] July 20 (KWS) – Lusaka Agreement Task Force and Kenya Wi...

I have often wondered about the tone to adopt in writing posts here about the BBC's reporting of climate change. Are my thoughts about Richard Black and Roger Harrabin too waspish, and should they be toned...

[image: Map of countries' actions and commitments on climate change. The Smith School at Oxford has rated each country's actions and commitments on climate change. Dark green is ‘Very good’, dark orange ...

*A Victory for Protection of Sogorea Te* *July 20, 2011* *http://www.protectglencove.org* ** After 98 days and nights of a continuous prayer vigil, the Committee to Protect Glen Cove is pleased to announce...

The Lion Fire burning in the Golden Trout Wilderness of Sequoia National Forest has grown to approximately 3,000 acres. A plume of smoke could be seen east of Porterville again Tuesday afternoon. As the ...

A federal team has taken over management of a wildfire burning more than 8 square miles in northeast Wyoming. The Whoop Up fire is burning on federal land 10 miles south of Newcastle and has prompted the ...

[image: Apa Sherpa, world record holder for climbing Mount Everest 21 times, at the inauguration of an artificial climbing wall on the eve of the 10th Girimitra Sammelan (mountaineer’s meet) in Mumbai on...

[image: Fetching water in the Borena zone in Ethiopia's Oromiya region. For Abdha Aso, a 20-year-old mother of five, it involves a four-hour round trip to a muddy pond. Only a year ago, she could reach a...

A magnitude 5.4 earthquake has struck South of Panama at a depth of 17.6 km ( 10.9 miles), the quake hit at 15:51:30 UTC Wednesday 20th July 2011. The epicenter was 150 km (93 miles) South of David, Panama ...

The United Nations declared a famine Wednesday in parts of southern Somalia as the east African nation suffers the worst drought in half a century. Thousands of Somalis have fled in search of food and wate...

At a morgue in Pakistan's largest city, five linen pouches -- each the size of a loaf of bread -- line the shelf of a walk-in freezer. Wrapped inside each small sack is the corpse of an infant. The babi...

The people out here are tough, and so are their animals. But there is a limit to how much any human can take, and people like Alfon Abdulahi Mohamed have reached it. We met Alfon as we drove towards wha...

The Chinese government, the top international investor in U.S. Treasuries, urged the U.S. government to get its debt under control or its credibility will suffer. "We hope the U.S. government will take re...

European officials are scrambling to resolve the debt crisis in Greece amid signs the contagion is spreading, but a comprehensive solution remains elusive ahead of a crucial summit on Thursday. The leader...

Tim Kelsey, No 10's director of transparency, said that schools and doctors should use the web to cut down paperwork and reduce their costs. Mr Kelsey said: "We don’t want to have schools spending money on...

Syrian troops and armed groups described by one resident as "death squads" have laid siege to the city of Homs since Monday night, sources said. Syrian rights activist Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Lon...

Twenty protesters from China's minority Uighur community were killed in a clash with police in the ethnically tense northwestern region of Xinjiang, a Uighur exile group has said. State media quoted an of...

Republicans and Democrats are still debating a deal to lift the US debt ceiling in order to avoid defaulting on its payments. Congress must raise the $14.3 trillion limit on US borrowing by August 2 or t...

Fears are growing that Italy could become the latest victim of the Eurozone's debt crisis. Worries over the euro currency are growing and plans for a second Greek bailout remain deadlocked. Also the Eur...

The eastern state of Odisha in India is pitting small farmers against international business interests in a battle that threatens the Indian government's idea of development. "POSCO go back!" is a common ...

Pakistani spies have been operating a front organisation in London to exert political pressure on the government, it was claimed on Tuesday. Details of the organisation emerged as two alleged spies were ch...

Tens of millions of dollars in urgently-needed US aid for Somalia are being withheld even as parts of the country are set on Wednesday to be declared a famine zone. Conditions in the country, hit first by...

The American presidential credentials of Tea Party favourite Michele Bachmann came under damaging scrutiny on Tuesday, when former aides claimed she repeatedly suffered from "incapacitating" migraines and ...

Have you noticed that a really bad mood seems to have descended on world financial markets? Fear and pessimism are everywhere. The global economy never truly recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, an...

San Jose budget cuts aren’t hurting all businesses, and in fact, one group in particular seems to be cashing in on the city’s economic woes: prostitutes. Prostitution has made a rapid comeback to San Jose...

Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned. The Nation...

As a livelihood strategy, migration is increasingly coming into the forefront of academic and policy discussions. In developing countries, migration is crowned as the linchpin of the economic wheel. There ...

A U.S. drone has been shot down while flying over a nuclear facility in Iran, according to Iranian media reports. Ali Aqazadeh Dafsari, a member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Co...

Pakistan's spy agency spent millions in a secret effort to influence Congress and the White House, it has been claimed. The FBI has charged two men with illegally lobbying politicians, including Presiden...

Corps of Engineers LA Coastal Area science office to close over a patronage fight with the Jindal admin ~Mark Schleifstein~Hat Tweet and Title @skooks ~Also~Louisiana coastal authority to review status of r...

*His News Corp launched Climategate* Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit has been writing about the links between the University of East Anglia and the recently arrested Neil Wallis, a former editor of the no...

Yup, India and Pakistan have joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization! I have lots of ground to cover here, so sit a spell. First, Pakistan and geez I haven't covered that country for a bit.... It is a h...

Link Sent in by Reader: At least 13 people have been reported dead in a earthquake of magnitude 6.1 in Central Asia. Uzbekistan's emergency ministry said the quake in Kyrgyz border area had also left 86 ...

One of the worrying things about the BBCs current wall-to-wall coverage of the Murdochalypse* is that when the Eurozone utterly collapses your average BBC viewer will ask themselves "*when did that start?*...

Chandelle is walking the walk she talks in a small house on an amazing acreage somewhere in California. Check out her latest blog post. It is inspirational. http://www.chicken-tender.com/2011/07/mistaken-...

A European has been killed in a car bomb in Yemen, according to local officials. The vehicle appears to have been rigged to explode when the driver turned on the engine, according to a police official in ...

As we learned last election, when the political wave rises, it's hard to avoid it. If ever you wanted evidence of just how powerless local campaigns are, look no further than some of the quality men and wo...

Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford thinks his city has more libraries than donut shops. In fact: When the Urban Affairs branch closes, Toronto will have 3.9 libraries per 100,000 people, which is what Vanc...

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake has struck the Kermadec Islands Region at a depth of 34.8 km ( 21.6 miles), the quake hit at 11:54:51 UTC Wednesday 20th July 2011. The epicenter was 129 km (80 miles) East of R...

By Noah One of the first voices to blow the whistle on the phone hacking, former *News Of The World* journalist Sean Hoare, was found dead Monday in Watford, about 25 miles northwest of London. Police sa...

A magnitude 4.6 earthquake has struck off the Coast of Costa Rica at a depth of 23.2 km ( 14.4 miles), the quake hit at 11:01:08 UTC Wednesday 20th July 2011. The epicenter was 191 km (118 miles) SSW of Le...

Further to my last post, how can we build a world without hate when the people in power are moving in the opposite direction? Last year I stumbled on a CPAC broadcast of hearings being held in the Canadia...

In Texas, the survivor of a vicious hate crime is campaigning to spare the life of his assailant, who murdered two other people and is scheduled to be executed today. I collect these kinds of stories, and...

Link Supplied by Reader: Assam government on Tuesday sounded an alert across the state after flood waters breached embankments and submerged roads and houses in Lakhimpur, Dhemaji and Sonitpur districts,...

A WALKER got a monster surprise when she encountered a gruesome sea creature curled up on the sand. Margaret Flippence, 55, stumbled upon the scary beast while strolling along the beach with her husband ...

A British man has been shot dead and his brother injured during an apparent robbery while on holiday in Venezuela, a family friend has confirmed. Thomas Ossel, 28, from Bedfordshire, was fatally shot in th...

A nurse has been arrested in connection with the saline poisoning deaths at a hospital in Stockport. Greater Manchester Police said the 26-year-old woman is being held on suspicion of murder. Her arrest...

THREE pupils from different schools in the Shiselweni region died mysteriously, forcing parents to suspect an outbreak of the deadly meningitis disease. However, the ministry of health has allayed fears o...

Your time is over. You only had 4 hours 30 minutes for the 3 problems of the second day. The TRF problem was this one: *Q5*: Let \(f\) be a function from the set of integers to the set of positive integ...

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake has struck the Taiwan Region at a depth of 28.2 km ( 17.5 miles), the quake hit at 06:12:18 UTC Wednesday 20th July 2011. The epicenter was 66 km (41 miles) East of Hualien, Taiwa...

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake has struck off the East coast of Honshu, Japan at a depth of 11.1 km ( 6.9 miles), the quake hit at 21:07:40 UTC Tuesday 19th July 2011. The epicenter was 327 km (203 miles) East...

Iceland's gotten all the press of late, but there are other volcanoes in the world. One of the more famous ones, Italy's Mount Etna, spent Monday night into Tuesday morning sending up cascading fountains o...

Civil defence officials say floods and mudslides caused by heavy rains have killed at least 10 people and forced more than 20,000 to leave their homes in northeastern Brazil. The Civil Defence Department...

A large and powerful typhoon lashed Shikoku Island and parts of the Kinki region in western Japan early Wednesday, leaving one people missing and 50 injured in 15 prefectures, according to China's Xinhua n...

Newsnight gave the pie-thrower the briefest of mentions last night: "There was an attack by a member of the public… A man was led away in handcuffs." A bit coy about identifying him there. In January Ne...

Scientists off South Africa's Cape use crane and ropes to get disoriented half-ton shark back into sea. Marine researchers in South Africa had a narrow escape after a three-metre-long great white shark br...

An avalanche in southwestern Colombia affected 30 families and left a 50-year-old woman temporarily stranded Monday night. The mudslide tore through the town of El Aguilla in the Valle del Cauca departme...

Five more cattle have been claimed by the ‘mysterious disease’ that spread in and around the Makhan village of Manipur’s Senapati district even as state Veterinary Department is still has no clue about the...

The remains of a 14-year-old girl missing for four months have been found in the wilderness near her home in Portland, Oregon. Yashanee Vaughn was last seen at a Taco Bell in March. Just days later police...

Authorities have identified the four Colorado family members killed after being swept down a raging creek, when their vehicle plunged off a section of a washed out highway. Thirty-nine-year-old Laurel Con...

FBI agents have raided three homes in New York in the hunt for suspected members of the computer hacking group Anonymous. More than 10 officers stormed the home of Giordani Jordan in Baldwin on Long Isla...

An ongoing criminal investigation into claims that the principal of a private charter school in California has been molesting pupils since 1997 has led to the school's closing. Robert Adams, the 60-year-o...

This is the horrifying moment a fully grown leopard pounces on a forestry department official in a village in deepest India. The big cat mauled six people after straying into the village from a nearby nat...

I was away yesterday and have just caught up with the news that the BBC Trustees are due to publish their long-delayed report on science coverage today. The Mail says that geneticist Steve Jones - who beli...

The latest victim of the intense heatwave that is crippling the country is the nation's concrete. There are grave concerns that sidewalks and roads in cities across the U.S. may start exploding under the ...

A producer claims he met with Casey Anthony in Palm Springs today to discuss a $1million television deal, the MailOnline can exclusively reveal. Al Taylor, who on Sunday said Anthony's first interview was ...

Jenny Roderick has posted thousands of fliers about her missing granddaughter in in northern Kentucky cities. A pretty 17-year old girl, Paige Johnson disappeared last September and police have no leads i...

The 17-year-old boy who 'brutally and mercilessly' killed his parents before having a house party while their bodies were still inside a bedroom confessed to his best friend, told him he was possessed by t...

An 'extremely dangerous' rapist was freed only two months into his sentence - because he was prosecuted for a crime that doesn't exist. Top judge, Mr Justice Maddison, slammed the CPS's mistake as 'a woefu...

A drunkard postman neglected his rounds and hid 31,000 undelivered parcels and letters at his home because he was regularly too trollied to deliver them. Steve Tasker, 43, who would often have a few pints...

A Network Rail whistleblower was silenced minutes before an employment tribunal could hear her claims that safety records of several level crossings were falsified. The Times reported that Maryanne Rosse,...

While Westminster fiddled over the phone-hacking frenzy, the European economy was burning last night. World financial watchdogs issued an extraordinary warning of a global economic ‘earthquake’ triggered ...

The Murdoch empire continued to pay the legal fees of the two men jailed for phone hacking Prince William even after they were convicted. James Murdoch revealed yesterday that News International is still f...

Photo courtesy: Daniel Morrison via TreeHugger I haven't been this grossed out since I blogged about meat being made from the protein in human fecal matter and/or sewage sludge. It's one of those truths ...

To lunch with Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon where the talk is of little other than the proposed United Nations vote on full recognition of a Palestinian state as proposed by President Abbas...

When Americans think of poverty, we tend to picture people who can’t adequately shelter, clothe, and feed themselves or their families. When the Census Bureau defines “poverty,” though, it winds up paintin...

When career criminal Vaughn Matthews decided to snatch a woman's purse and run from a stopped El train last Wednesday, he perhaps thought Lindsay O'Brien - who is nearly three months' pregnant - would be a...

The man who launched the entire phone hacking scandal had become a paranoid recluse who believed someone was out to get him, a friend has revealed. Sean Hoare, who was found dead at his flat in Watford, He...

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I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.